Tuesday, September 27, 2005

"DOH'S"

I had to link to this Jed Babbin post just for the "Simpsonization" of the Department of Homeland Security's acronym.

But he makes some serious, and inciteful, points as well about the Emily Latellan musing of the White House to essentially deep six HLS in favor of shoveling the disaster relief job into the already overburdened, underfunded Pentagon:

*The Posse Comitatus Act forbids it

*The Pentagon is, well, overburdened and underfunded

*HLS - which is most definitely NOT underfunded - while never surrender its vast new fiefdom to DoD, much less a substantial slab of their budget

*Soldiers are not cops, firemen, or relief workers; they're soldiers. Or, put another way, the military was never meant to be a domestic "meals on wheels" any more than the international variety.

Babbin suggests reforming (yet again) HLS. Which goes to show that while he has nailed down what NOT to do, what TO do is still a work in progress.

But if we go down that road (yet again) we can rely on there being quite a few more "dohs" to come.